Lecturer in Political ScienceBA Political Science Programme Director

Department of Political Science and International Studies

Contact details

Department of Political Science and International StudiesSchool of Government and SocietyMuirhead TowerUniversity of BirminghamEdgbaston, Birmingham,B15 2TT, United Kingdom

About

Stephen is a lecturer in political science. Before re-joining POLSIS in 2007, he was a research fellow in the ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics (Innogen) at the University of Edinburgh.

Feedback and office hours

Qualifications

PhD Political Science (Birmingham)

Biography

I co-convene the second year course Political Analysis and convene the third year course Power in Britain and the masters course Advanced Political Analysis.

My research is at the intersection of British politics, governance research, and political sociology. At a theoretical level, my research focuses on conceptualising power, political agency and political change. This theoretical work has led to substantive empirical research in four main areas: Prime Minister’s Questions (which has appeared in The Guardian, The Financial Times and on BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour), the British parliamentary and extra-parliamentary left, the governance and regulation of the body, and the status of women in academia.

I am interested in supervising postgraduate research in the areas mentioned above, as well as related areas.

Teaching

Modules:

Political Analysis (POLS 201)

Power in Britain (POLS 306)

Advanced Political Analysis (G5)

I am also the BA Political Science Programme Director, the Programme Convenor for the MA in Political Science (Research Methods), and the Academic Contact for the POLSIS Undergraduate Lecture Series.

The POLSIS Undergraduate Lectures are organised by students for students. Past speakers have included the Rt Hon. Alistair Darling, Paul Mason (BBC's Newsnight), Prof. Howard Hotson (University of Oxford), and Prof. Emeritus Zygmunt Bauman (University of Leeds). If you would like to know more about this lecture series, or would like to join our organising committee (current POLSIS students only), please do not hesitate to email me.

Postgraduate supervision

Current doctoral supervision:

Liam Stanley (co-supervisor with Dr David Bailey) - The Everyday Politics of the Global Financial Crisis in the UK

Cherry Miller (co-supervisor with Dr Peter Kerr) - Gender, Power and Institutions: An Ethnographic- Investigation into the Performance of Masculinity in the House of Commons

Past supervision:

Fran Amery (co-supervisor with Dr Nicola Smith) - Abortion politics in the UK: Feminism, medicine and the state

Martin Monahan (co-supervisor with Dr Peter Kerr) - The Conservative Party and Social Justice Policy 1997–2010: An Historical Institutionalist Analysis

"Understanding Change in Political Analysis: On the Need to Bring Space into Theoretical Positions and Empirical Analyses", (with Nicola Smith), Political Studies Review, 6/2, (2008), pp.191-204.

"In Defence of Pluralism in the Teaching of Ontology and Epistemology: A Reply to Hay, Marsh and Furlong”, (with Laura Jenkins), Politics, 27/3, (2007), pp.208-211.

"Teaching and Learning Ontology and Epistemology in Political Science", (with Laura Jenkins), Politics, 27/1, (2007), pp.55-63. Also published in Special Virtual Issue on Learning and Teaching, Politics, (2013)

"Making Time for Change: On Temporal C.onceptualisations within Critical Realist Approaches to the Relationship between Structure and Agency", Sociology, 40/1, (2006), pp.143-161. Also published in Volume 4 of Olsen, W. (ed.) (2010) Realist Methodology (London: SAGE/Benchmarks in Social Research Methods).

Other:

"Essential scrutiny or a national embarrassment? Experts respond to the Hansard Society’s report on Prime Minister’s Questions”, Democratic Audit, (2014).